


Heart

by BeneficialAddiction



Series: Boxers, Briefs, and Other Shorts [28]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Coulson Lives, Dragons, Fix-It, Gory Imagery, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), dragon!clint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 17:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15734427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/pseuds/BeneficialAddiction
Summary: He fights.He fights, but he holds back, saving the hideous, tearing pain and rage for the one who truly deserves it.He holds back his fangs, his wings, his scales, and when the fight is done he retches up the burnt, shriveled mass of his broken heart, a smoking piece of carbon and charcoal, the edges already diamond sharp.He carries it to the top of Stark Tower, finds Loki breathing shallowly in a crater of rubble smashed into the floor, and shoves it down the trickster god’s throat.





	Heart

Clint waits until he’s sure that Iron Man is still alive before he climbs to the top of Stark Tower. It doesn’t take him long – he was already inside the building, having crashed through one of its ten thousand windows, and he can be fast when he wants to. 

He hates that part of himself sometimes - the magic, the dragon blood that courses through his veins. 

It was that magic that had attracted Loki in the first place, that had curled out from the very core of him to caress the tesseract like an old lover, welcoming it as something familiar after being caged for so long. 

The small, cold reptilian thing at the back of his brain had recognized its mistake as soon as the blue had started to curl over his vision, had retreated to the place inside him where he’s kept it locked away, and it had been those bars, that habit, that nearly iron-clad control that had made it impossible for him to free himself. 

He’d led the assault, attacked friends and colleagues alike, all while the power at the very heart of him had hidden away in cowardice. 

_Heart._

Loki had been so proud of that, his heart, of being able to hold it in the palm of his hand. 

But he hadn’t known what he’d held – only one of seven hearts that beat inside Clint’s chest – and he didn’t know that by killing Phil Coulson he had crushed that heart and freed the creature that lived in fire and flame in the pit of Clint’s belly. 

He fights. 

He fights, but he holds back, saving the hideous, tearing pain and rage for the one who truly deserves it. 

He holds back his fangs, his wings, his scales, and when the fight is done he retches up the burnt, shriveled mass of his broken heart, a smoking piece of carbon and charcoal, the edges already diamond sharp. 

He carries it to the top of Stark Tower, finds Loki breathing shallowly in a crater of rubble smashed into the floor, and shoves it down the trickster god’s throat. 

That’s how the Avengers find them five minutes later, Clint looming over the battered god who cowers and cringes away from him, horrified by Clint’s true face, but he’s had lots of practice hiding what he is, and he gets himself under control before anyone else sees. Loki babbles nonsense that only Thor understands, but the Thunderer must not believe him because he says nothing. 

After all, Loki lies. 

The godling is taken off in chains and the Avengers go to schwarma, and Clint eats because the beast that lives beneath his skin is ravenous. The food tastes like sawdust in his mouth because it doesn’t scream or bleed when he sinks his teeth into it, and he’s careful to hold himself still because he still wants to fight, wants to fly. Then Fury comes and tosses Phil Coulson’s trading cards down on the table, soaked in something red and sticky that most certainly is _not_ Phil Coulson’s blood, and suddenly the bars that he cages himself with aren’t enough anymore. 

“What have you done?!” he snarls, throwing Fury into the wall and pinning him there, scales breaking out all down his wrists and arms, fingers tipped with talons. Smoke curls around his words, color seeps into his eyes, and beneath him Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD goes pale. 

“Clint!” Natasha barks, and he’s not surprised that she’s the only one who isn’t shocked. 

She might not be a dragon, but the human heart that beats in her chest is as near his own as it could be. 

Unfisting his hands from Fury’s lapels, he takes a step back, letting him drop to the floor. The man stares at him like Clint has rewritten his entire world-view, and if that isn’t something to be proud of he doesn’t know what is. Lifting his lip, he bares long, thin teeth, lets a dark rumble roll up out of his chest. 

“My brother spoke truth,” Thor says in awe, and Clint doesn’t even bother looking at him. 

“Your brother’s a liar,” he hisses, a chill running down his spine as he remembers all the things the tesseract had shown him. “But we’ve all made mistakes, said things we didn’t mean, haven’t we?” 

Fury swallows hard, and Clint actually thinks he’s cracked him for a minute, that he’s actually scared Nick Fury so bad that he’ll break a lifetime’s habit of being a sneaky, manipulative bastard, but deep down he knows better. 

“Phil Coulson is dead,” he insists slowly, his words heavy as concrete. 

Clint flicks the tip of a forked tongue out from between his teeth, tastes the sweet bitterness of burning caramel and falsehood. 

“I’m sorry Barton.” 

“You will be,” Clint hisses, and Fury’s jaw hardens. “If he _does_ die, because of this little game you’re playing, you will be.” 

Fury sneers at him, flicks a glance at Nat over Clint’s shoulder which probably demands she get him to psych immediately, then shoulders roughly past him toward the doors. 

Slowly, carefully, Clint picks up his chair from where he’d knocked it onto the floor and sits down at the table, pulls the battered cards toward him. Picking Number Eight out of the pile, the one he’d given to Phil from his own hoard after having been in love with him for three years, he sniffs along the edges, presses his fingertips into the tacky red substance around the edges. 

“So, um...” Stark says, staring at him with open fascination, but Clint ignores him. 

Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he touches them to his tongue, inhales deeply. 

Pomegranate. 

Motherfucker.

**AVAVA**

The Avengers head back to the Tower and Natasha bullies him through a shower and into her bed, confused and unwilling to admit it. As he lies curled around her in the dark he whispers apologies, licks the tears from her cheeks and promises her that nothing has changed, that he’s still the same person and that Phil is out there, somewhere. She argues with him, tells him that fake blood isn’t enough proof, and goes to sleep with her back to him, hurt.

He’ll make it up to her, he will. 

He’d never meant to keep it from her this long anyway. 

He’s just... careful with his hearts, with himself, as reckless as he is all the rest of the time, and it’s hard. 

It’s painful, bringing that part of himself to the fore, setting it free to stretch its wings after years, years of fear and hiding and careful, careful paranoia. 

Doesn’t mean he won’t do it, doesn’t mean he won’t take that hurt, cringe with it for the rest of his life if it means... 

But he’s getting ahead of himself. 

They have to see Loki off first, and Clint goes to the pick-up point with his jacket on and his mouth shut, hiding the scales and the smoke that he can’t choke back just yet. Thor grips Loki tightly by the elbow, and all the greasy hair and steel muzzle can’t hide the fear on his face when Clint comes strolling up, easy as you please. 

It’s a front, of course it is. 

He wants nothing more than to tear this mad godling limb from limb, to splash his blood and strew his entrails about and to devour him as he still screams. He wants to crack his bones open and suck the marrow, grind his teeth on all the magic he possesses until there’s nothing left of him, and then burn that nothing to ash. 

He doesn’t. 

Phil Coulson is still alive somehow, not dead despite Loki’s best intentions, and he _is_ Thor’s brother after all. 

Besides, Clint’s broken heart will do its job. 

He can already see the poison seeping out into Loki’s system, a lifetime of anguish and heartbreak. 

He’ll ache with what he’d done to Clint until the world ends. 

“Thor says his punishment will last a thousand years or more,” Nat murmurs in his ear, her own pain carefully tucked away. “Small consequences.” 

A cruel grin slowly unfurls across Clint’s face and smoke escapes from the corners of his mouth. 

No. 

Much longer than that. 

Thor makes his apologies once more, says his farewells, and then he and his brother are gone, hopefully not to be seen again for some time. Clint holds no grudge against the blonde hammer-wielder, but he is naïve and blind to his brother’s true nature. Clint has seen it, smelled it, tasted it on his own tongue, and he wants no part of it ever again. 

The Avengers go back to the Tower, repairs already underway, and Tony shows them up to a cozy living room complete with kitchenette and wet bar. Clint listens to the hum of conversation around him, hesitant and curious as they each get to know more about the men they’d fought beside, and can already sense that they’re going to end up living in each other’s pockets more than they could possibly realize. 

It’s fine – they'll need each other – but the one person they _truly_ need, the one person _he_ truly needs is missing, and he can’t breathe... 

“We’ll have to plan something nice for Agent,” Tony Stark says quietly, as somber as Clint has ever heard him be. Across the room, the light above the elevator dings and he makes a gesture in the direction of the doors. “Pepper can... oh. It’s you. Why are you in my Tower?” 

Nick Fury strides into the room and Clint swallows hard, feels his wings tingle. 

“I didn’t lie,” he barks gruffly, and Clint raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Phil Coulson died during the Battle of New York, three goddamn times in fact. That son of a bitch split his heart in two, but we got him back, got him... mostly stable.” 

There’s a loud burst of noise all around him, as the Avengers leap to their feet, knocking furniture, cursing Fury a blue streak, but inside Clint’s chest it’s all quiet. 

“We can’t repair the heart,” Fury says, and he’s looking Clint dead in the eye, ignoring the threats being leveled all around him. “We can try to find a donor, but he doesn’t have that kind of time.” 

No. 

There was never enough time was there? 

“I don’t know what the hell you are,” Fury scowls, and it’s a dark, low warning tinged with hope. “And at this point, I don’t wanna know. But Phil Coulson is a good man, and if you...” 

“Shut up,” Clint whispers, throat raw and voice hoarse. Silence immediately falls, but he says it again. “Shut. Up.” 

Rising slowly to his feet, the beast inside him purrs happily when Fury takes a hasty step back, when his hand goes to the sidearm he keeps strapped to his hip. 

“Don’t tell me what kind of man he was,” Clint growls, teeth sharp in his mouth. “You have no idea what he meant... what he _means_ to me. No idea what I’d do for him.” 

“I’m counting on it,” Fury rumbles. 

And well. 

What more is there to say? 

Fury doesn’t know what he is, what he can do, but he’s asking Clint to do it anyways and he will, without question or hesitation. He follows the man out, tailed by the Avengers, and ends up riding shotgun in an SUV with Natasha behind him, the others following in one of Tony’s speedsters. They drive across the city in silence, to a small clinic that looks like it’s funded by the state until you step inside, and then they’re scanned and wanded and patted down and sent on through to a tiny, well-guarded room where Phil Coulson lays in a hospital bed, gaunt and grey and barely breathing.

**AVAVA**

Clint’s breath catches in his chest as he looks over his handler, his friend, his lover. He’d only just managed to tell Phil how he felt before all of this, scant weeks ago in the New Mexican desert, but he’d been in love with the guy for a lot longer than that. This, this man in this bed, connected to dozens of tubes and wires and machines, this is not the shining, competent, badass man he’d fallen for so hard, and for all of a moment, terror swamps him.

Gripping the bed railing hard enough to make a dent, Clint stands at Phil’s bedside and tries not to shake apart. He has to coach himself through it, count his breathing and reach out to him with all his senses; touch and sight and sound and smell and taste. He’s hurt, badly, that much is obvious to anyone, but Clint’s heightened senses and that slick, sixth _knowing_ tell him that it’s somehow even worse than it seems. 

His chest is... open somehow, ribcage cracked to reveal the torn, fragile heart beneath and Clint doesn’t understand how he’s still alive. 

But he doesn’t need to understand the magic for it to work. 

He’d always imagined giving Phil one of his hearts on their wedding day. A small, private ceremony, an obsidian box padded and lined with silk. It was ritual, custom, the ultimate sign of love and trust between a dragon and their bonded. Giving over one of your hearts into another’s care, it... it’s a lot. 

But he’d always told himself he would do it. 

He’d never thought it would happen like this. 

This time the heart he chokes up is alive and healthy, plump and wet and raw and pumping hard, staining his hands red and purple. He holds it for a long, quiet moment, refuses to pray when it’s a god that’s done this, ignoring the stunned and horrified stares of the Avengers and the doctors crowding into the room. He doesn’t know how it works but he doesn’t have to, just takes his heart and pushes it into Phil Coulson’s chest, hopes with everything he has. 

The light is all black and gold and purple and blinding, and not even he can see through it. He pulls his hands back, red and tacky to the wrists, and this time he tastes copper and rust, fingers shaking. He can feel the double thump behind his own ribs, his remaining hearts working triple-time – fear and longing and utter pain, and then Phil is coughing, choking, his back arching up off the bed and the machines around them all start shrieking their alarms and Clint is being dragged back and away from the bed, hauled into an out-of-the-way corner to watch, Natasha curled around him and holding him back. 

It takes an hour, nearly an hour to put everything to rights again. 

It feels like longer. 

Fury and the rest of the Avengers are all bustled out while the doctors work, but no one even thinks to make Clint leave, and that’s a good thing because he doesn’t think he could stop himself from flashing his eyes, showing his teeth. He watches with the careful attention and raging suspicion of a wild predator as the breathing tube is removed from Phil’s throat, as vital signs are taken and scans are run, wound care is brought in and sent out again when the gaping chasm in Phil’s chest is found to be closed and already halfway healed. 

Christianson, the cardia specialist, looks at the monitors, places his stethoscope to Phil’s chest, then narrows his eyes and shakes his head. 

There’s nothing more he can do, he says. 

He knows nothing about this new heart. 

It’s fine – Clint doesn’t need him, and Phil doesn’t either. 

He can already feel his heart settling comfortably into its new home – after all, he knows Phil as well as he knows himself by now, if not better. 

He can breathe again, and he thinks maybe Phil can too, because he’s lying back on the bed and the heaving of his newly-healed chest is slowing, his eyes coming back to focus as he finally, finally stops struggling and relaxes against the pillows. 

He’s nearly sleeping when the last of the doctors walk out, casting Clint a warning look, fingers pressed to her lips as she goes. Natasha squeezes his elbow, gives him a little nod before slipping out, and it takes all the courage he couldn't find with Loki for him to step up to Phil’s bedside and look down at him, breath catching in his throat. 

“Clint,” Phil sighs, his throat clicking dryly, and then Clint’s hands are all over him, touching his face and petting his hair and gripping his wrist gently, unable to let go. 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes, tears hot in his eyes, and Phil pants a weak chuckle, grimacing with pain. 

“What did you do this time?” he asks, and Clint would tell him about Loki, about his lies and about how he just couldn’t... 

Except Phil would never blame him for that, even if he should, and when he opens his eyes he’s looking at Clint from pupils gone impossibly thin and dark, irises that are a harder, deeper blue than he remembers. 

“I gave you my heart,” Clint breathes, and everything he’s ever wanted to say is all wrapped up in those five little words. 

Fear flashes across Phil’s face and Clint feels his hearts thump hard, as the man he loves scrabbles for his hand, squeezes desperately. 

“What about you? Clint, what about...” 

“I have five more,” Clint murmurs, stroking his hair back from his forehead, testing the warm brimstone-burn of his skin. 

He doesn’t question how Phil knows, if he understands. 

He looks up at Clint with a dragon’s eyes, and his mouth curves at the corners when he sighs. 

“You have mine.” 

Clint sobs, leans down and presses his forehead to Phil’s, tears dropping freely onto his cheeks.


End file.
